UMass Medical, University Campus nurses reach pact, avert strike

UMass Memorial Medical Center and the union representing 1,100 of its nurses reached a contract agreement late Wednesday night, just hours before a scheduled strike.

The deal means nurses at the hospital's University Campus will work regular shifts Thursday. They will not strike.

The nurses and the hospital agreed to a three-year contract that includes limits on the number of patients assigned to one nurse during a shift, something nurses have fought for publicly. Members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association have described staffing levels at the hospital as unsafe.

The contract, which still must be ratified by the rest of University Campus nurses, sets a nurse-to-patient ratio, on average, of 1-to-5. The hospital also agreed to hire 80 full-time equivalents, Ms. McLoughlin said.

University Campus nurses received the same pension deal as Memorial Campus nurses, but smaller raises — 1 percent a year for three years.

After negotiations ended, nurses from the bargaining team met with colleagues who were waiting in a meeting room at Coral Seafood on Shrewsbury Street.

“We prevailed today,” nurse Ellen Smith of the bargaining team told a couple dozen cheering nurses a few minutes after midnight. “It was well worth the fight.

“It wasn't about the money,” she added. “It was about the staffing. We'll get the money in the next contract.”

The nurses' union said U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, a Worcester Democrat, helped bring both sides back to the bargaining table to avert the strike.

Dr. Eric W. Dickson, president and chief executive officer of UMass Memorial Health Care, released a brief statement: “Together with the MNA, we have reached an agreement that meets the objectives of the Medical Center and is also in the best interests of our nurses, and most importantly, the patients and the families in the communities we serve.”

The agreement came after 18 months of often-tense negotiations, in which both the nurses and the hospital tried to win public support.

The two sides made a last-ditch attempt to find compromise Wednesday at the DCU Center. Talks were scheduled to go from 2 to 6 p.m. They lasted nearly 10 hours.

While talks continued, scores of nurses gathered at Coral Seafood for a rally, which turned out to be a mostly low-key affair where they waited for updates on the negotiations. Local union representatives and Democratic politicians offered words of support to the nurses. Mayor Joseph M. Petty made a brief appearance, shaking hands and chatting with nurses.

“You all know the position you're taking is the right position,” said state Rep. James J. O'Day, D-West Boylston.

Douglas Belanger, vice president of the UFCW Local 1445 and treasurer of the Central Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said his unions would help the nurses in any way they could. “We're with you 100 percent, all the way,” he said.

UMass Memorial spent the last several days bracing for a strike. It rescheduled many surgeries and procedures. Some patients were moved to other hospitals in Central Massachusetts and even Boston.

Last Friday, it spent $4 million to hire temporary replacement nurses through a staffing agency, and it was contractually obligated to keep the nurses for five days. The hospital didn't say what would happen with the temp nurses now that the strike is off.

The crowd of nurses at the rally Wednesday thinned as the night went on, but many nurses, some wearing blue scrubs or MNA T-shirts, stayed for several hours, waiting to find out whether they would be reporting to work in the morning or standing outside the hospital in protest.

“I'm just very thrilled about the staffing,” said Sue Foley, one of the nurses who spent the night following negotiation news. “The last few years, more and more nurses have been cut. We finally rectified that.”

Nurses at the Memorial and Hahnemann campuses had also threatened to strike, but they nixed the strike plan after settling contracts with UMass Memorial last week. Some University Campus nurses were upset that their colleagues at Memorial Campus settled for less-than-ideal staffing.

“Memorial sold us out,” said Lyn Flagg, a University Campus nurse who followed the bargaining sessions closely. “Memorial took a lesser deal than we would have taken. We stood strong in asking for safe staffing.”

The last strike at UMass Memorial was in 2006 and lasted only five hours. Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital staged a 49-day strike in 2000, and they came close to walking out of work again in 2011.

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